diff --git a/src/main/java/sc/fiji/labkit/ui/plugin/AbstractProcessFilesInDirectoryPlugin.java b/src/main/java/sc/fiji/labkit/ui/plugin/AbstractProcessFilesInDirectoryPlugin.java
index 13f1b713..8a867360 100644
--- a/src/main/java/sc/fiji/labkit/ui/plugin/AbstractProcessFilesInDirectoryPlugin.java
+++ b/src/main/java/sc/fiji/labkit/ui/plugin/AbstractProcessFilesInDirectoryPlugin.java
@@ -33,6 +33,8 @@
 import net.imagej.Dataset;
 import net.imagej.DatasetService;
 import net.imagej.ImgPlus;
+import net.imglib2.parallel.TaskExecutor;
+import net.imglib2.parallel.TaskExecutors;
 import net.imglib2.type.Type;
 import net.imglib2.util.Cast;
 import org.apache.commons.io.FilenameUtils;
@@ -42,6 +44,7 @@
 import org.scijava.command.Command;
 import org.scijava.log.Logger;
 import org.scijava.plugin.Parameter;
+import sc.fiji.labkit.pixel_classification.gpu.api.GpuPool;
 import sc.fiji.labkit.ui.segmentation.SegmentationTool;
 import sc.fiji.labkit.ui.utils.progress.StatusServiceProgressWriter;
 
@@ -49,6 +52,11 @@
 import java.io.FileFilter;
 import java.io.IOException;
 import java.util.Arrays;
+import java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService;
+import java.util.concurrent.Executors;
+import java.util.concurrent.ThreadFactory;
+import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicInteger;
+import java.util.function.Supplier;
 
 abstract class AbstractProcessFilesInDirectoryPlugin implements Command, Cancelable {
 
@@ -90,17 +98,40 @@ public void run() {
 		segmenter.setProgressWriter(new StatusServiceProgressWriter(statusService));
 		FileFilter wildcardFileFilter = new WildcardFileFilter(file_filter);
 		File[] files = input_directory.listFiles(wildcardFileFilter);
-		Arrays.sort(files);
-		for (int i = 0; i < files.length; i++) {
+		AtomicInteger counter = new AtomicInteger();
+		TaskExecutor taskExecutor = getTaskExecutor();
+		taskExecutor.forEach(Arrays.asList(files), file -> {
 			try {
-				processFile(segmenter, files, i);
+				processFile(segmenter, files, counter.getAndIncrement());
 			}
 			catch (Exception e) {
 				logger.error(e);
 			}
+		});
+	}
+
+	private TaskExecutor getTaskExecutor() {
+		if (use_gpu) {
+			TaskExecutor blocksTaskExecutor = fixedNumThreadsTaskExecuter(GpuPool.size(),
+				TaskExecutors::multiThreaded);
+			TaskExecutor imagesTaskExecutor = fixedNumThreadsTaskExecuter(2, () -> blocksTaskExecutor);
+			return imagesTaskExecutor;
+		}
+		else {
+			return fixedNumThreadsTaskExecuter(1, TaskExecutors::multiThreaded);
+//			return TaskExecutors.nestedFixedThreadPool( 2, (Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors() + 1)/ 2 );
 		}
 	}
 
+	private TaskExecutor fixedNumThreadsTaskExecuter(int numThreads,
+		Supplier<TaskExecutor> multiThreaded)
+	{
+		ThreadFactory threadFactory = TaskExecutors.threadFactory(multiThreaded);
+		ExecutorService executorService = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(numThreads, threadFactory);
+		TaskExecutor taskExecutor = TaskExecutors.forExecutorService(executorService);
+		return taskExecutor;
+	}
+
 	private <T extends Type<T>> void processFile(SegmentationTool segmenter, File[] files, int i)
 		throws IOException
 	{
diff --git a/src/test/java/sc/fiji/labkit/ui/segmentation/BatchBenchmark.java b/src/test/java/sc/fiji/labkit/ui/segmentation/BatchBenchmark.java
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..93b85249
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/test/java/sc/fiji/labkit/ui/segmentation/BatchBenchmark.java
@@ -0,0 +1,89 @@
+
+package sc.fiji.labkit.ui.segmentation;
+
+import bdv.export.ProgressWriterConsole;
+import net.imglib2.util.StopWatch;
+import org.apache.commons.io.filefilter.WildcardFileFilter;
+import org.scijava.Context;
+import org.scijava.command.CommandService;
+import sc.fiji.labkit.pixel_classification.utils.SingletonContext;
+import sc.fiji.labkit.ui.BatchSegmenter;
+import sc.fiji.labkit.ui.plugin.LabkitSegmentImagesInDirectoryPlugin;
+import sc.fiji.labkit.ui.segmentation.weka.TrainableSegmentationSegmenter;
+
+import java.io.File;
+import java.io.FileFilter;
+import java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException;
+
+public class BatchBenchmark {
+
+	private static final String base = "/home/arzt/tmp/labkit-memory-test/";
+
+	private static final String inputDirectory = base + "input/";
+
+	private static final String segmenterFile = base + "normal.classifier";
+
+	private static final String outputDirectory = base + "output/";
+
+	private static final String fileFilter = "Untitled_1*.tif";
+
+	private static final boolean useGpu = false;
+
+	public static void main(String... args) throws Exception {
+		runNewVersion();
+	}
+
+	private static void runOldVersion() throws Exception {
+		Context context = SingletonContext.getInstance();
+		StopWatch sw = StopWatch.createAndStart();
+		TrainableSegmentationSegmenter segmenter = new TrainableSegmentationSegmenter(context);
+		segmenter.setUseGpu(useGpu);
+		segmenter.openModel(segmenterFile);
+		BatchSegmenter batch = new BatchSegmenter(segmenter, new ProgressWriterConsole());
+		for (File input : listFiles()) {
+			System.out.println(input);
+			batch.segment(input, new File(outputDirectory, input.getName()));
+		}
+		System.out.println(sw);
+		context.close();
+		System.exit(0);
+	}
+
+	private static File[] listFiles() {
+		File baseFile = new File(inputDirectory);
+		File[] files = baseFile.listFiles((FileFilter) new WildcardFileFilter(fileFilter));
+		if (files != null)
+			return files;
+		return new File[0];
+	}
+
+	private static void runNewVersion()
+		throws InterruptedException, ExecutionException
+	{
+		Context context = SingletonContext.getInstance();
+		CommandService cmd = context.service(CommandService.class);
+		System.out.println("start");
+		removeImageFromDirectory(outputDirectory);
+		StopWatch stopWatch = StopWatch.createAndStart();
+		cmd.run(LabkitSegmentImagesInDirectoryPlugin.class, true,
+			"input_directory", inputDirectory,
+			"file_filter", fileFilter,
+			"output_directory", outputDirectory,
+			"output_file_suffix", "segmentation.tif",
+			"segmenter_file", segmenterFile,
+			"use_gpu", useGpu).get();
+		System.out.println("stop");
+		System.out.println(stopWatch);
+		System.exit(0);
+	}
+
+	private static void removeImageFromDirectory(String directory) {
+		File d = new File(directory);
+		FileFilter fileFilter = new WildcardFileFilter("*.tif");
+		File[] files = d.listFiles(fileFilter);
+		if (files == null)
+			return;
+		for (File file : files)
+			file.delete();
+	}
+}